Greetings.
OGI is happy to announce a new way of accessing the treasure trove of
information that comprises the GRASShopper lists. We have set up a
gateway to Usenet news, and created the newsgroups:
info.grass.user
and info.grass.programmer
With this gateway, messages mailed to the grassu-list (or grassp-list) will
automatically be posted to the corresponding Usenet newsgroup, and messages
that are posted to the Usenet groups will be mailed to the appropriate list.
In this way, THE TWO MEDIA WILL BE EQUIVALENT as to content, so you lose
nothing by choosing to receive GRASShopper by E-mail or by Usenet news.
Each method of receiving the GRASShopper lists has unique advantages and
disadvantages. E-mail subscriptions are good in that you receive a copy of
every message personally addressed to you, and you do not have to set up any
extra software or depend on any system services beyond normal E-mail.
However, some people do not like to have their personal mailboxes "cluttered
up" with messages, or pay a fee per message, or have limited disk space for
mail.
Usenet has the advantage of keeping messages in a central "bulletin board"
that anyone can access. The software for accessing Usenet is generally more
advanced than mailreaders -- newsreading software provides a way to follow
"threads" of conversation (by Subject: line or message-ID), and to "kill"
topics that are not of interest. Additionally, Usenet is sometimes a more
efficient method of transport since one copy of each message is read by
several people at a site. However, as a disadvantage, not all sites
recognize the utility of Usenet (i.e. don't provide it to users) and those
that do sometimes are not properly configured or do not receive all the
newsgroups; thus, the Usenet option might not be available to everyone.
Individual users will have to check with their system administrators
and/or organizational/campus computing departments to see if Usenet is
available at their sites.
So, for many of you, this will be just an FYI announcement. Those who wish
to switch to accessing the GRASShopper lists through Usenet should talk to
their system administrators about acquiring the two newsgroups listed above.
Both groups are available from uunet.uu.net and other major Usenet sites, so
there should be little problem in acquiring a feed.
If you have any questions about this new service, please let me know. We
regret that OGI cannot be of assistance in setting up newsreading software
or starting a Usenet feed for individual sites.
Rob Knauerhase
--
Rob Knauerhase [rob at amber.cecer.army.mil] Office of GRASS Integration
Construction Engineering Research Labs, US Army Corps of Engineers
"See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the
money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it.
Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs." -- Dave Barry